Should Americans Be Required To Vote? Essay

America is a free country and voting is an important part of that freedom. Unlike other countries, where dictators and monarchs make decisions on behalf of the people, Americans get to decide who runs the country and what laws should govern citizens. But even though voting is an important privilege, some Americans choose not to vote and the government is now trying to make voting mandatory for people to vote and I am in opposition to that. So many uneducated voters will vote, its considered taking our freedom away, and we really don’t need to worry as much about voting as about education. One objection to this argument is that the disadvantaged, the poor, the unemployed, and the uneducated are less likely to vote than then the other groups. We need to worry about whether voters will invest the time to learn which policies really serve the public because voters tend to vote for what they believe to be national interest. Consider this; if every fourth person you meet votes the same as one of their friends or bases their vote off of a catchy commercial or slogan, and that is constant throughout a university, then a fourth of that university is essentially voting blind. This means that roughly 9,000 students are voting for things they may not understand. Now take that percentage and transfer it to the United States. If only one-third of the country votes, that’s more than 100 million people. And if a quarter of them vote blindly, 25 million people are doing that. 25 million votes could swing an election which means that people that might not even know more than his name could decide our president. We as the United States of America reserve the right to vote and also the right to not vote if we feel that we are undereducated on facts of each candidate. Forcing people to vote would be taking the right of having that choice, and that goes against the American belief.

If the government is allowed to take away that right what keeps them from taking away other rights? These rights weren’t just handed to Americans; we had to fight for them so we shouldn’t let them go. Also, does the government think that the Americans will react calmly to this? I hope not. We shouldn’t be worrying about forcing people to vote because forcing those who are indifferent to vote only dilutes the results, and increases the chances that the will of the informed public is not honored. There is nothing positive that comes from forcing people to vote so instead, why no mandate education? If the government would be worried about peoples education instead of taking away rights, most citizens should be able to pass a test, demonstrating a working knowledge of the American political system, and possibly current events, before they can register to vote. So in the end, if the government mandates voting, many voters will be uneducated, freedomless, and we wouldn’t even have had to do that with education. Forcing people to vote doesn’t really fix anything but voter-turnout but that not nearly as important as a better government.